Photographers capture a moment of life the instant before it disappears forever. Whenever I view captivating images—whether it be of nature, street scenes, or portraits—I feel as though I’m being given the gift of a moment in time.

But what really touches me the most are those personal photos taken of ordinary people’s own lives—as they create their own memories. As a child, I would sort through the photos I had taken and often discard the rest. Little did I know the significance and emotions that ALL photos that I took then would hold for me today. Even viewing those photos taken by a stranger of a place or time that I feel connected to will evoke memories and strong emotions in me.

What kinds of nostalgic images have triggered you to travel on a Flashback Journey of your own?

“What I like about photographs is that they capture a moment that’s gone forever, impossible to reproduce.”
— Karl Lagerfeld

We Shared A Time

How many of us have imagined at some time in our lives of going back into the past to high school–but bringing with us the self confidence and knowledge that we did not have the first time around? I, too, imagined that scenario just a few years after graduating high school.

Due to feeling shy and awkward, there were many people I did not even attempt to get to know and later wished I had. And, having low self-esteem, I let things said by negative people bring me down. It would have been so nice to “do over” high school with the confidence I had gained in just a few short years of working and supporting myself after graduation.

It’s interesting to see how powerful those school experiences and memories can be. How important our “place” was to many of us. Some people look forward to high school reunions (especially those first few reunions) so that they can show their classmates how they’ve blossomed into a very attractive person, or how successful they have become.

In later years, as we mature, the approval of others becomes less important. The focus is now more on others rather than on ourselves. We are grateful to become reacquainted with our classmates, and to form new friendships with the classmates we did not know before.

Whether we hung out together or in the same group doesn’t matter anymore. We have become a group over time, even if we have not seen each other for over 25 or even 40 years. We are a group of people with shared memories. We may have not made the memories together years ago, but we have much more in common with each other now simply by having had the same teachers, listening to the same music, experiencing the same current events, going to the same places such as favorite pizzerias, local nightclubs, county fairs, the shore, and even places that don’t exist anymore. We shared a time, even if we did not know each other then. Today we share memories. Today we are connected.